Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Café Aficionado: Trudging through the coffee trail

Future coffee supplies are in uncertainty. Production
has leveled off even as demand has increased, causing coffee-bean prices to
quadruple since 2001.

Almost 17.6 billion pounds of coffee
beans were consumed worldwide last year, up from 2.6 billion in 1982, according
to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But production in Colombia, which
provides 10% of the world's Arabica beans, has dropped 36% since 2005. Output
in Brazil, the world's leading Arabica producer, recently hit a four-year low.

According to coffee industry experts,
there are other factors causing coffee's problems, such as climate changes in
some coffee-growing areas and population growth in Central America leading to pressure
to convert coffee farmlands into housing and shopping malls.

Coffee historians believe most of the
world's Arabica coffee crop shares genetic ancestry with two 18th century
plants: one brought to Europe from Indonesia, and another taken from Yemen and
cultivated in Brazil.

And this is the reason why some
experts favor expanding the varieties of coffee being cultivated and
crossbreeding plants to strengthen them. "The holy grail is a
heat-resistant varietal that provides quality coffee," says Patrick
Criteser, chief executive of Coffee Bean International, which supplies the
private-label coffees to such retailers as Target and Kroger and is part of
World Coffee Research. "If we could develop that, it would solve a lot of
our problems."

But efforts like World Coffee
Research, which aim to persuade competitors to tackle common problems, face
obstacles. Some of the world's largest coffee companies are pursuing
proprietary research projects to expand coffee's genetics. Nestlé SA has a
project it calls the Nescafé plan, which involves robusta, the other major type
of coffee bean, a spokeswoman says. And Starbucks Corp. is conducting research
through support centers staffed by agronomists who help local farmers, a
spokeswoman says.

Ventures like World Coffee Research
must also overcome friction with national research institutions that often aim
to protect local interests, notably in Ethiopia, believed to be the fatherland
of Arabica. There, hundreds of wild varieties exist, but government officials
have sometimes had a contentious relationship with foreign coffee sellers.

Starbucks and Ethiopia reached a legal
settlement in 2007 after the country sought to trademark its best known coffee
beans. Ethiopia wanted U.S. patents on the names of its three best coffee
regions, Yirgacheffe, Harrar and Sidamo, while Starbucks sought to patent a
coffee with Sidamo in the name.

Ventures like World Coffee Research
must also overcome friction with national research institutions that often aim
to protect local interests, notably in Ethiopia, believed to be the fatherland
of Arabica. There, hundreds of wild varieties exist, but government officials
have sometimes had a contentious relationship with foreign coffee sellers.

Starbucks and Ethiopia reached a legal
settlement in 2007 after the country sought to trademark its best known coffee
beans. Ethiopia wanted U.S. patents on the names of its three best coffee
regions, Yirgacheffe, Harrar and Sidamo, while Starbucks sought to patent a
coffee with Sidamo in the name.

Regarded as Indiana
Jones of coffee, Tim Schilling, 59 years old, was recently trudging through the African
wilderness in South Sudan, trailing a barefoot tribeswoman guide named Nyameron. He was seeking
wild strains of Coffee Arabica, the fragrant beans used to make most of the
world's lattes and cappuccinos. The Texas A&M University agronomist heads
World Coffee Research, a nonprofit financed by Folgers coffee maker J.M.
Smucker Co., Peet's Coffee & Tea Inc. and others.

The expedition group's goal is to
expand the global coffee crop's tiny gene pool. But after four days of hiking
on this plateau west of Ethiopia, Mr. Schilling's 15-member expedition—which
included a coffee taxonomist, a Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. executive,
agriculture students and hired porters—still hadn't found any specimens that
seemed new. They were hoping that Nyameron, a wild-coffee connoisseur they had
met through a Murle tribal chief, could help.

A former expert on peanut breeding, he
became a coffee-growing guru after the U.S. Agency for International
Development challenged him to help revive agriculture in Rwanda after its civil
war. He soon realized the answer wasn't nuts but coffee, and he set out to use
scientific methods to help the country's small growers.

Mr. Schilling's recent destination—the
Boma plateau—seemed an unlikely place to find wild coffee. But he was armed
with a treasure map of sorts: an account by botanist A.S. Thomas, who wrote of
encountering coffee in 1942 "growing wild and reproducing itself without
human aid."

The coffee experts camped at a
Christian missionary compound and trekked about six miles a day along narrow
footpaths. "We're looking for genes that could improve taste or
color" and plants with good drought resistance, said botanist Sarada
Krishnan, Denver Botanic Gardens director of horticulture.

Meanwhile, on the Australian front, here’s
a fascinating Wall Street Journal article by Gillian Tan, which spotlights Mr.
Di Bella, 37 years old, founder of Di Bella Coffee in Australia’s Queensland
state, which now sells 124.8 million cups a year nationwide.

Quote

Phillip Di Bella recently launched Kick, a
line of canned espresso drinks, in Australia and Malaysia, and he plans to
supply cafes and restaurants in China, India and Vietnam, as well as the rest
of Asia-Pacific.

He credits Starbucks for the
increasing demand. “The emerging middle class in Asia are beginning to enjoy
the boutique coffee culture, and a lot of that is due to Starbucks and other
chains acting as a pioneer,” he says.

Mr. Di Bella’s travels have taught
him, however, that tastes vary. “Italy drinks 90% of its coffee black, and in
the morning, but Australia drinks 85% of their coffee with milk throughout the
day,” he says, noting that he’s a three-a-day man but goes up to a
heart-jolting 10 when he’s doing tastings.

“Coffee is a plant which changes
yearly, as do the innovations around its extraction and processing so I’m constantly
in search for elusive perfection,” says Mr. Di Bella, who believes the best cup
hasn’t been grown yet.

Not that some regions aren’t getting
close. He shared his five favorites.

Cuba: “The region produces coffees
with elegant and complex notes of masculinity, which have a very unique
infusion of tobacco, cocoa and espresso,” Mr. Di Bella says. “Farmers use no
pesticides and achieve richness in flavor due to their ability to use diverse
varieties of plants in each farm.”

How to drink: Espresso

Mexico: Coffee from the Veracruz
region can be “high grown,” resulting in a mix of full flavors where no single
one dominates, or “prime washed,” which are strong with a rich, thick taste.
“Mexico also provides excellent peaberries, adding intensity to the cup, and
maragogype beans, a variety known for its greater size,” Mr. Di Bella says.

How to drink: Costa Rican beans are
ideal in milky coffee drinks like lattes, he says.

Peru: Peru’s coffees come from the
Amazon rainforest areas or the country’s higher-elevation northern region,
“resulting in rich cups always maintaining their sugars, due to the ability of
those varieties to retain the minerals emanating from the fruit of the coffee,”
he says. They tend to have a berry-like flavor, he adds.

How to drink: Macchiato

Brazil: Brazil is seen by many as the
“must-have coffee” when it comes to espresso, he says. Farmers there have
worked hard to provide consistency in their beans, one of the reasons it is the
world’s biggest grower.

How to drink: Perfect for a
cappuccino, and a light dusting of chocolate brings it to life, Mr. Di Bella
says.

I very much appreciate my articles and
photos appearing on fellow bloggers' sites, popular broadsheets, and local
broadcast news segments, but I would appreciate even more a request for
permission first.